Street Symphony
by free-pirate
Summary: It started in Lawrence, Kansas on a starry night lit by the blare of police sirens and the flash of emergency lights, and this is how it ends.


**A/N:** It's been forever since I've posted anything here. My complete masterlist can be found over at my LJ, which is my homepage link, but I'm slowly bringing it all here for the sake of organization. This turned out almost completely opposite of what it was supposed to be. Hope you still love me, Trini! It was all her idea, anyway. Amazing and quick beta by** thepuppeteer LJ**.

Not mine. I just like to play for my own amusement, and, if I can manage it, that of others. :)

There's a Selkie in the Florida panhandle. It's been so long since they've taken down something as simple as a Selkie (which is saying something, because Selkies _aren't_ simple) that Dean chases it without a second thought.

Sam doesn't try to hide the fact that he watches Dean the entire drive down. By the time they're halfway through Alabama, the uncomfortable silence has escalated into a familiar strained tension and Dean knows exactly there this is headed.

It's been headed this way for a while now, and as much as he wishes Sam could just get over it, he knows he can't. And he won't, because the stubborn bastard never gives up on anything.

"You gonna tell me where we're going?"

Dean wants to tell him no, that he wasn't planning on it, but that would only add fuel to the inevitable fire and hey, maybe honestly will work this time. He doubts it, but it's possible.

"Fairhope. There's a Selkie."

Sam snorts, and Dean thinks (hopes) he's going to drop it. He doesn't, of course he doesn't; he just crosses his arms over his chest and says, "It's pointless."

Dean knows that Sam isn't talking about the Selkie or about hunting in general. This is the point where he should set his jaw, close the issue for discussion and continue driving. He should but he doesn't, because he's been waiting for it, wanting the fight and he can't keep his traitorous mouth shut.

"What, getting rid of it? That's our job, Sam." It comes out tighter than he wanted, clipped and accusatory. The atmosphere is suddenly fractured, tense moment broken open, and he recognizes the lack of an immediate response for what it is.

His brother doesn't rise to the challenge right away, but that's worse. It means Sam is thinking about it. The calm discussion he'll try to make this will degenerate into a fight like it always does. "No, we did our job. _You_ did our job. It's over."

Dean glances over sharply. "It's never over." He can feel Sam flinch from all the way across the seat at his own words, Dad's words, parroted back at him. Even if Sam doesn't answer, his silence is enough. Dean knows that he doesn't approve, but there are things Sam does that Dean doesn't approve of, so he calls it even.

It's not, not even close, and the palpable anger radiating from the passenger seat for the next few hours is reminder of that.

*

Dean feels Sam watch him as he gets out of the car, walks around to the motel's office door. Been watching him all day, and it's annoying as hell, but the situation in the car would be annoying anyway. The fresh air feels good after so long being locked in with all that tension.

He won't talk about it. Sam used to want to talk about it, but after discussion after discussion getting him nowhere, he's learned not to bother. Now he just gets angry, and Dean wants to tell him that if he's so unhappy with the situation, he can leave.

Only Dean needs him, so he doesn't say that either. Rather, he comes to a decision as he's waiting for the clerk to hand over the room keys – if he has to deal with this all night; he's going to come out of his skin.

So he throws Sam one of the keys unceremoniously, waits in the car as Sam unloads his bags, and doesn't even bother turning the engine off. "Don't wait up," he says, and leaves Sam standing just outside their room with his bags and the key.

The bar is crowded, close; smoke lingers near the ceiling as always, and the bartender watches him with a wary eye as he approaches the bar.

He doesn't know how long he sits there. The clock above the bar doesn't work, ticks away the minutes, only half as fast as it should, and by the time he's worried about it he's realized it doesn't matter. Sam is predictable, if nothing else.

Dean shrugs off any company and watches the bartender wipe the bar down as people come and go.

Maybe he should feel guilty for not upholding his end of their bargain. Maybe it shouldn't matter so much that Sam isn't either, but they came to this particular agreement for a reason. Sam was going to get nowhere fast using Azazel's power – in fact, that's what got them into this whole mess in the first place. Sam's counterargument was, of course, that Dean didn't need to go after every creature, spirit, or demon they came across.

Yeah, he'd already technically saved the world. But Sam didn't understand that a fight like one didn't come to an end just because the biggest bad got locked away again. Before Lucifer, there were ghosts and creatures that killed people. After Lucifer, there would be more of the same. Just because he was ready to give it up, didn't mean the bastards at the other end of the barrel were ready to stop doing what they did.

And despite his various arguments against Sam's habits, Sam refused to change them. So he continued to do the things Dean didn't approve of and Dean continued to hunt.

It isn't working, Dean realizes as he picks at a spot in the grainy wood. It wasn't supposed to be like this, but things rarely turn out how they're supposed to. Sam is predictable, and that was one thing Dean had always known. When you challenged him, told him he couldn't or shouldn't do something, he rushed right out and did it anyway.

The whole situation is idiotic. They can't go on like this, not if they want anything other than what happened today: long, hateful hours in the car where Sam did nothing but glare and Dean turned the radio up, pretended not to notice or care.

There's a napkin on the bar a few inches from his drink. He makes a split-second decision and reaches for it, asks the bartender for a pen and begins to scratch out a letter.

*

Sam slams the door shut, throws his bag onto the nearest bed, and stands awkwardly in the center of the room. His hands clench and unclench and he fights to control is breathing, tries to think of something other than the fact that Dean is stubborn and this isn't _working_.

Why does Dean have to do this? Why can't he just… stop? He'd said, years ago, that he was tired. Of hunting, of living at all – the moment wasn't explicitly clear on that, but Sam's given him every opportunity to stop hunting and he just… won't.

It's not that he can't. The past few years have been something of a nonstop hunt for both of them. And yeah, Sam would be the first to admit that he hasn't stopped using his power – but it isn't something you just stop. It's addictive and heady, rush of adrenaline and… and Dean doesn't understand. Hunting isn't like that, has never _been_ like that.

No, Dean's just being stubborn. Like Sam really expected anything different.

He breathes, slowly, tries to not think about it. But there's nothing else to think about. Dean will be back sometime tonight, maybe in the morning, and it'll be the same shit all over again.

Sam has tried to get Dean to quit for his own good, and he refuses. Every single time. He isn't going to sit around and go along with it, isn't going to watch Dean slowly kill himself like this.

With all the grisly, anger-driven determination he can muster, Sam crosses to the dresser and pulls out the complimentary pad of paper. The pencil stub rolling around in the drawer beside it is the most ready thing, and it's as good as any for getting this out.

It takes almost two hours, and by the time he's run out of words, his hand is aching. He folds the sheets over themselves, writes Dean's name on a blank side and throws it on the tiny table.

Then he grabs his bag and heads out the door, leaving the motel key on the dresser and the light on.

*

It's nearly three when Dean finally climbs back into the car, and then only because the bartender kicks him out. He clutches the napkin tightly, rolling it into a cylinder and holding it even as he drives back to the motel. He feels raw, scraped-out and open, like every passing car can see straight through him, and it has nothing to do with the alcohol.

He roots around in the trunk as quietly as he can once he gets to the room, pulls out an old roll of medical tape and adheres the napkin to the door. Sam's name glares out at him as he throws the tape back into the first aid kit, gets back into the driver's seat, and backs away without so much as a sigh.

Dean finally allows himself to stop two towns over, and by then he's so damn tired there are four yellow lines on the pavement instead of two. He pays for another room with a different card, a single, and settles down to sleep for a few hours.

He doesn't actually sleep, but that's not really the point.

Sam spends the night at a small bed and breakfast at the edge of town. In the morning, he sits on the edge of the bed and watches his cell on the bedside table.

It doesn't ring. It doesn't do it's vibrating dance all over the tabletop, so Sam stands, sighs, and goes to shower. When he gets back, he checks his missed calls and finds nothing. It's only nine; Dean could easily still be sleeping off last night's alcohol. He checks it every fifteen minutes, manages to make himself look presentable and goes down to breakfast.

Sam doesn't eat, but whatever the portly elderly woman who owns the place gives him to drink (Sam's too out of it to notice) does wonders for the emptiness in the pit of his stomach.

By the time dinner rolls around, he realizes that Dean isn't going to call. He doesn't go downstairs, instead he stays upstairs and paces. So Dean couldn't find it in himself to understand, even after Sam bared everything? He couldn't pick up the phone and fucking call? There was a time when, if Sam was gone for more than two hours, Dean would be calling, demanding to know where he was and why he wasn't back to the room yet.

Apparently he just doesn't care enough anymore. Sam's become a freak, a monster to him, so it's okay if he just… leaves.

Is giving up hunting such a hard thing? Is it hard enough that Dean would rather lose Sam than even try?

He's too old for this. He's been through too much, been forged into something new; he doesn't cry, but something lodges in his throat and prevents him from breathing. So this is the way it's going to be, then.

Sam almost calls, almost hits his speed dial number one, but his fingers shake too much and he decides at the last minute that if Dean doesn't want him around anymore, he'll stay away.

*

Dean leaves the TV at a low drone so he can hear his phone when it rings. He looks over every few seconds to make sure the missed call or message light isn't blinking. He even looks a few times, but Sam remains silent.

After the first few hours, he's tempted to call anyway, but that'd be like admitting weakness. He'd have thought he displayed plenty of that last night in the folds of the bar napkin.

He'd have thought Sam would read it and understand, just a little, of how difficult it'd be for him to leave hunting, to leave everything. Sam's glorified ideas of a perfect life were fine for him, but Dean couldn't _do_ that. As long as Sam was still using his power, Sam couldn't do it either. But he chose not to see that.

If Dean didn't hunt, what would he do? He couldn't… his name was on the FBI's Most Wanted for a long list of crimes he didn't commit. The ones that he did do were only in his line of work, of course.

So this was it, this was all he could do. Sam couldn't respect that, couldn't see it even through Dean's half-hearted attempts at forming words to convey it.  
And even after he'd written it all out, bared more to Sam than he'd ever exposed to anyone before, Sam had to throw it back in his face in the form of a maddening silence.

Two can play at that game.

Dean turns his phone off and tosses it into his bag, packs up and hits the road.

*

The Selkie in Florida goes down quickly, and then it's on to a poltergeist in Texas and a clan of witches in Michigan. Zombie infestation, demonic possession, shapeshifter, ghoul… they all go down without much comment. None of them are particularly memorable, none of them stick, and by the time Dean finds time to look at a calendar, it's been three months and Sam hasn't called.

He washes the blood off his hands, cleans the guns, and skims the next newspaper in the stack.

*

Sam finds another psychic somewhere in California, a legitimate one, and spends six months learning everything he can from the man. His name is Daniel and he's the best there is, or so he likes to think. By the time he packs up and hits the road again, he's able to do things he didn't think were possible.

He doesn't have a plan, exactly. That is, he doesn't have a plan until the crazies come.

They seem to follow him from one place to the next, from one end of the United States to the other. All shapes, sizes, ages… they all follow him with haunted eyes and clutching fingers. He spends a good amount of his waking time trying to throw them off the scent.

Sam doesn't actually figure out what's going on until he's three weeks into this particular push-pull, and then he realizes just how fucking stupid he is.

He isn't a demon and he isn't a psychic. He's somewhere in the middle and humans with natural-born gifts follow him around like a source of power, hungry, wanting a little of his unearthly talents for themselves. He didn't even know that could happen. Sam packs up and heads back to Daniel's the next day.

Daniel teaches him how to block it, how to shield himself from the ones that follow him around, but when he heads out into the world again, it isn't humans he has to worry about anymore.

Because now the demons want to tear him limb from limb, and by training himself he's given them a trail to follow.

Weeks and months fade into years. Dean learns not to look up anymore, because the calendar only judges him.

Sam locks himself away somewhere where the demons can't find him and waits it out.

Once, Dean gets sliced by a particularly violent chimera. There's a scar running down his entire left side by the time it heals, rough. He restricts himself from hunting for a while and nearly goes fucking stir crazy.

Long days in solitude play with Sam's head. He hasn't been truly alone for years, can't remember ever being this long without hearing another human voice. Another human voice, one that isn't colored over by demons, taunting just out of his reach.

He moves things around the room for something to do.

There's a demon in South Dakota. It fucks with him before he kills it, pronounces his Latin vowels perfect and long like they're supposed to be and sends it back where it came from. But three more always take one's place, and Dean considers calling Sam for the first time in a long time.

But if what the demon said was true (_demons lie, demons lie_), Sam wouldn't be able to pick up anyway.

*

One morning, the taunting abruptly stops. The voices cut off, leave the back of his mind, and he can think with a stunning amount of clarity.

Sam crawls out of his hole and they swarm him; he tries to contact that hidden place where his power resides and finds it weak, barely pulsing.

By the time he's banished them, his vision is whiting out around the edges.

*

Bobby dies in May.

Dean only realizes it's been four years when he checks for the date, and even then Sam's loss is nothing more than a dull throb. Like the pain that's starting to settle into his limbs when it's cold, it's something he can deal with.

There aren't a lot of people at the funeral, which is something Dean finds hard to believe. But he realizes that most of the hunters Bobby used to assist are gone now. It's a dangerous job, and the body count on this side of the morality line is just as staggering.

He's left the salvage yard and the house if he wants it, and he establishes a sort of base there. The halls hold ghosts, the kind that Dean can't get rid of: Bobby and Sam and Dad, all watching him because he's alone now. He's where he always thought he'd be.

Dean stays for almost a month before he sets things in order and follows the next lead that comes through. He'll be back to check on the place as often as he can, but sitting around with the grey eyes of the lost on him does nothing for his morale or his sanity.

*

Sam would like to do something useful with his gift, but he spends too much energy just keeping the demons away. He doesn't know where they're all coming from, doesn't really care as long as he can send them back.

The going is slow, and Sam wishes he had Dean here with him. It's ironic that he has to hunt to stay alive. Maybe Dean was right after all.

But Sam still has his pride.

*

There are years that pass without as much as a mention. Time drowns in the routine (or lack of it), and it doesn't matter anyway. Dean's back aches when it's going to rain and his hands constantly throb while he cleans the guns, but he doesn't pay it any attention. It fades into part of everything else, and for four more years he travels back to Bobby's (and he still thinks of it as such, can't not) at least once every two weeks and hunts in the meantime.

*

Sam struggles. He struggles to breathe, and when his power starts to fade, he struggles to use that. The demons taper off, maybe gathering their strength for a mass attack, and Sam gets himself the first motel room in what seems like forever and sleeps while he can. He sleeps until he's unable to anymore, and when he wakes, it's to the steady thrum of the power sustaining him.

He makes himself presentable for the first time in years and walks out into the world, only to find that it's aged while he wasn't looking.

That _he's_ aged when he wasn't looking.

His phone is still tucked away in a pocket of his bag, turned off because he can't charge it. He gets it plugged in and waits, impatiently, for it to work again.

No missed calls.

No missed calls, and he almost dials Dean just to see if it still works that way, to see what he's doing, to end this pseudo-feud because it's so stupid and what the hell made them think they'd be okay like this?

*

They are melted and reformed into different creatures. Dean, by the alcohol and the scars and years and years with no one but the car to talk to, becomes a crystallized version of what Sam remembers. Sam, by the slow burn-out and years of struggle and demons taunting him from the shadows, becomes brittle.

*

Dean doesn't really notice it until his knees start cracking every time he gets out of the car. Until the waitresses he flirts with get younger and their smiles are obligatory, not interested. Until he passes by a cracked motel mirror one morning and sees the lines around his eyes have deepened and set.

Even then, it doesn't become an accepted fact until he looks closer and realizes that his eyes aren't his own. He hardly recognizes himself anymore, but he recognizes the look - hopeless, desperate, and half-crazed - of someone who should have died a long time ago.

It's been almost ten years since he left Sam, and he hasn't let the number catch up with him before now.

And now that it's apparent, now that it's surfaced out of the rough-hewn edges of what he tries to avoid, he aches. His joints ache, his skin aches, his lungs ache. Maybe he's avoided that, as well, the telling signs of age. But it's here now, lingering just out of his reach.

Days later, he reaches into his pocket and fishes for his phone, flips it open and dials Sam's number. He hasn't thought about the digits in years, and yet they still spring readily to his fingertips. Before he realizes he's doing it, he hits the green button and waits through the toneless rings.

When he counts fifteen of them, he hangs up.

It's a stupid thing to do, anyway. As hard as he's hit the alcohol, as hard as he's tried to get lost in the job, it's only been a temporary fix. It was always leading to this, and now that it's out there and he's finally let himself touch on it - now he can't stop thinking about it.

*

The Impala breaks down just outside of some nowhere-town in the middle of Missouri. They're having an apple festival in the town square, and even after Dean calls to order the parts (the prices keep rising on the parts he needs, mostly because they don't make them anymore - he's half-tempted to max out about ten of his credit cards on ordering them in bulk), even after rubbing elbows with the friendly locals, the 'best apple pie in Missouri' just tastes bitter.

He walks to the bed and breakfast two streets over and pays for three nights.

The car remains parked where she wouldn't run anymore, off the shoulder and a little into the grass on the side of the highway. When the parts get to the P.O. Box he set up specifically for this occasion, he hikes out to fit them and realizes, sullenly, that there's going to be a point where she just quits. He's been replacing her parts for over twenty years, and she's nearly sixty... and yeah, people still gape when he drives past, but he guesses it's mostly from shock. Some of them haven't ever seen a car as old as his.

Dean suddenly feels that his life as a hunter is inexplicably tied to how long the car will hold out.

He's glad that wasn't the case years ago, or Sam would have found some way to disable her. The thought isn't comforting, but it's true. He knows that if there had been something, anything he could have done to stop Sam from becoming something... other, he'd have done it without hesitation.

*

The sudden, electronic blue light somehow makes it past his eyelids, bores into him, and it's not until his phone vibrates heavily on the bedside table that he reaches for it. Dean fumbles until it falls, then groans, rolls over, and slides halfway off the bed to retrieve it.

Annoyed, he flips it open. "Yeah?"

Tight silence fills the airwaves, and he's about to hang up when the person on the other line says, almost silently, "Dean?"

The night he meets Sam again for the first time in ten years is cold.

December, layers of snow on the ground, and Dean doesn't want to leave the warmth of his hotel room. It's probably a testament to just how old he's getting (even if he's not really that old, yet. But he's a hunter, and over forty is plenty old), and for that reason he harasses his knees into working. He harasses the car into running even though he can tell she doesn't want to.

He forces himself to get out once he gets to the bar they've chosen. What can he say, after he up and left with nothing but a note to explain? It was cruel, yeah, but he didn't mean...

It wasn't supposed to last this long.

Sam was supposed to read what he'd written, was supposed to understand and call him back. If he couldn't do that, then Dean had no purpose in his life to begin with. He'd tried, honestly tried to get Sam to stop using his abilities. And true, he hadn't kept up his side of the bargain, but Sam didn't understand that either. Sam could walk away from it if he wanted; he knew how to do other stuff, knew how to be normal.

Dean didn't. It was his life, the only thing he was good at. He couldn't get a job like Sam could, didn't have any legal skills let alone marketable ones. Sam and hunting were the only things he had, and Sam had made him choose.

He doesn't regret his decision. He never has, because after a decision like that? You can't afford to regret it. He'd already given Sam everything. He had nothing left.

But his brother was still pushing. Hell, Sam was pushing him right now, even if he hadn't seen him in such a long time. Sam had a history of being able to screw with the way Dean's head worked, and absence wasn't going to make it go away.

*

It's smoky inside the bar, but it's smoky inside every bar. Dean scans the room as he walks in, feels the cold metal of the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans and wonders why he thinks he needs it. Habit. He limps up to the bar, his knees groaning in protest from the beating they've been forced to take lately.

'A beating' used to be being thrown into stone walls, floors, tearing sinew and ligaments from twisting the wrong way or being forced into shapes humans didn't make. Now it just means getting up on a cold winter night, leaving the comfort of his hotel room to drive to the bar where he'd see his little brother for the first time in forever. He's never worn his age quite like this before; a palpable weight, now, when before it was an abstract idea. He wonders if Sam feels this used.

He's saved from having to speculate when the door swings open again.

Sam meets his eyes over the heads of the crowd, eyes dark and boring into Dean. He wants to flinch away, but he won't. He isn't that weak anymore.

They're already started off on the wrong foot with a battle of wills.

Sam makes his way over to him and Dean's satisfied a little too much by the way he's nursing one of his knees just as gingerly. There's silver threaded through the hair at Sam's temples, salt'n'pepper littering the sideburns he still wears. His eyes have lost none of their dark sharpness, and it's this that digs into Dean the most.

As he gets closer, more details become highlighted; the deep purple bruises under Sam's eyes, the way his shoulders slump. He's tired. And no amount of rest could fix this weariness; it's more than bone-deep.

Dean knew it was something like this, why Sam called. He looks frazzled, burnt-out, in need of something that he can't find himself. Something he's been searching for a long time. Dean rests his slightly aching back against the hard edge of the bar and watches his brother cross the room.

He detaches himself like it doesn't matter, because it doesn't. It's just him now, and Sam's not going to change that. A while ago, when the world was still in danger of being taken over and there was still a holy war to be fought, he'd never had thought they'd get to this point: independent, no longer in need of each other to survive. He wouldn't have thought it was possible.

Maybe it isn't. Something pained, deep and hurting that lurks in Sam's eyes tells him that it's not, it's really not.

*

"Dean..."

He doesn't hear his own name often, and certainly not spoken with this much... desperation? Relief? He doesn't know what to call it.  
"Sammy," he breathes in response, and feels Sam stiffen up next to him. He would ask how Sam is doing, how the world has been treating him, but it doesn't sync right with the moment. There's a delicate balance between them that's never been there before. Dean doesn't know how to work around it.

There's silence for a few moments.

"What're you up to, these days?" Sam breaks the silence with a harmless enough question, but Dean can't come up with another answer fast enough to quell the one already bursting from him.

"Not what you'd want me to be."

And there it is, hanging out there like an ugly thing. Dean's not satisfied, never satisfied, with anything left untouched, any sore spot left unpressed or any bad tooth left unwiggled. Sam sighs, leans back in the stool and makes it creak under his weight. "Can we... not?"

"Wasn't doing anything," Dean answers, gruffly. Then, "You look like Dad."

Sam casts his eyes down, picks at something on the bar with his thumb and glances at Dean out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah?"

Dean nods.

Silence follows, only broken by the sound of the set breaking at a distance pool table.

"You could have called," Dean says, because despite what Sam wants, they need to talk about this. Either they talk about it now… or let it separate them for another ten years, and he honestly doesn't know which he wants.

Sam's tone is icy. "I'm not the only one with a phone."

Dean cuts this off before it can go any farther, stands (wincing), and throws some money down on the bar. "C'mon. I'm not doing this here."

The ride back to the room is painful. Sam sits in the passenger seat, legs jammed up under the dash like before, and the passing streetlights erase a little of John from his face.

But Dean doesn't let himself see it like that, because that isn't how it is, not anymore.

Later, he'll wonder how it happened. In the short ride from the bar to the motel, Sam's apparently changed his mind about a few things. As soon as the door is shut behind him, he grabs Dean and wrenches him into a tight hug that lasts forever, bone-crushing and long enough that Dean has no choice but to wrap his arms around his brother's back and hang on.

When they finally separate, ages later, Sam's eyes are red-rimmed. Not crying, but the gesture's there. Something surges in Dean's chest, resurfaces after being dormant so long that he doesn't remember it's there.

"Missed you," Sam says, so soft it's almost a whisper.

"Yeah," Dean agrees, pulling Sam in again. "Yeah, me too."

*

Days later, there's an uncomfortable moment in the car. It rivals the one that started this, so many years ago; neither of them want to bring up what's bugging them. Dean honestly doesn't know what Sam has to be bugged about.

But he'll be damned if he's going to let this go on, if he's going to lose Sam for another ten years. "So, uh," he says, and pulls into a roadside part without preamble. He parks the car in a spot and turns the engine off, turns sideways in his seat and looks at Sam.

Sam looks at him, eyes wide, like he's being backed into a corner. Dean wonders, not for the first time, what happened during the years he wasn't there. But he doesn't let it daunt him; he's gotten this far, he might as well say it.

"Why didn't you call?"

It isn't an accusation; it's as far from that as Dean can manage to make it with all this new, anxious energy filling his chest. He expects Sam to rise to what he'll think is a challenge, but Sam just sighs and slumps in his seat, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Fighting a headache. Dean wonders if it's a constant headache, now.

"Because I was waiting for you to call," Sam finally says, quietly, but his voice is loud in the silence. "I thought that you'd understand what I was trying to tell you. But it's nothing you could relate to, and I know that now. I shouldn't have tried." He's bitter, suddenly, and Dean has no idea what's going on.

"Wait, what? What was I supposed to understand?" He frowns, watches Sam closely as he shifts in his seat.

Finally, Sam lets out a sigh and raises his head to look at Dean. His eyes are bloodshot, and Dean doesn't know if that's from lack of sleep or something decidedly deeper. But Sam's being entirely earnest and even if he's older, even if there's something that's broken inside, that look still shoots straight through Dean.

"What I said, in the note. I left in on the bed and you were supposed to read it."

Dean blinks. "That's news to me. I didn't ever… Sam, I didn't ever go into that hotel room. I left you a note on the door, and _you_ were supposed to read it."

"You… never? I left and there was no note on the door, but I left early. So you mean…?"

Dean doesn't know whether to be relieved or not. He doesn't know what to feel at all. They've been apart for so long, driven to their personal versions of insanity through their separation, and it wasn't…

"So basically, we've been… this didn't have to happen?" Dean's own voice grows quieter, huskier with each word, and he can feel something lodge in his throat. He swallows convulsively around it, looks down at his hands for ten minutes before he can look up without his vision being blurry.

Sam's breaths are shallow, cheeks wet, and it's so fucking stupid that this is all they have left. Just because of their own pride, their own anger.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispers, and his voice is wrecked. It's like a punch to the gut, and Dean actually has to catch his breath.

*

It isn't comfortable, the jerky way they fit back together. They're sort of like puzzle pieces that have been warped with age and years of damage; the colors are off, the edges have expanded and frayed away, and what's left only completes half of the picture.

They aren't one entity anymore. There is no more Sam'n'Dean, just Sam and Dean living together, synced all wrong and out of rhythm. Working back up to being that solitary unit isn't going to be easy; in fact, Dean doesn't think it's even possible. He's now lived one-fourth of his life without Sam, which is something he didn't think he'd ever be able to do.

But he's done it. He's done it and those years, the scars that mar his body from the time when Sam didn't have his back, aren't ever going to go away. They aren't ever going to get them back.

And they still don't agree on a lot of things.

Sam doesn't use his abilities because he can't. He's dried up, burned out, tired down to the soul with the constant willpower it takes to pull something like that off. The rush is gone, replaced only with an exhaustion that no amount of rest can fix.

Dean would like to say that he wins, that way. He'd like to say that Sam isn't using his abilities but he can still hunt, but the honest truth... Dean doesn't want to.

Maybe he isn't as deeply weary as Sam is, but something of his forty-odd years of constant duty, of soldiering on when he shouldn't have had to shines through. He looks at Sam and realizes that he probably looks just as haggard, that his limbs don't work right anyway and he's more of a liability on the field.

If Bobby was still around, he'd be telling Dean to stop whining.

But neither of them know what to do. It's like they've lost their purpose; they drive all day, settle down at night and eat at greasy diners as they always did, but Sam no longer scans the newspapers for odd deaths. Dean no longer borrows Sam's laptop to look up any sort of strange news story from anywhere in the country. The Impala doesn't run like she used to, and since Missouri she's been getting steadily worse.

Smoke starts pouring out from under the hood one day as they're on their way across another state, and Dean realizes that this is it.

Sam stands with him in the chilly wind as he leans over the engine, tries to figure out what's wrong, but if he leans too long his back locks up and his fingers fumble over the caps and nozzles anyway.

He feels at least thirty years older than he is; his soul, at least, feels about ninety.

"Can you fix it?" Sam asks, and he's never asked that before. Dean ignores the flash of annoyance, straightens, and slams the hood down. Leaning back against her, feet out in front of him, and Sam joins him on the hood. This is familiar, at least; the heat of their thighs coalescing in the space between them and their hands shoved into their pockets.

"No," he says, softly, and he surprises himself at how much he doesn't care about sounding old anymore.

Sam blinks. "Wait, what? So... you're just gonna leave her like this?"

"The manufacturer doesn't sell the parts anymore. Nowhere does. She's blown a hose and I can't replace it."

"Oh."

A passing car makes the Impala rock on her wheels. The chill wind picks up, and Dean stuffs his hands farther into his pockets.

*

They get her towed to a motel. Dean cons the company somehow and gets them to bill some random address and the Impala sits in the space in front of their room, a sentimental collection of metal and machinery and memories that have sustained them through their entire lives. Now useless as anything but a lawn ornament.

And they don't even have a lawn to make her queen of or a garage to put her to rest in.

*

The twisting path of their lives started on the hood of the car, and that's where it ended. In some town they don't even know the name of, they scrounge up the cash to pay for a tow truck to take them to South Dakota. When they settle down at the salvage yard, it isn't like coming home. It's like an ending. There are still ghosts in the hallways; they still watch them with their piercing eyes. But Dean isn't alone anymore and there's just enough happiness to get by on.

He still has his dignity, and no matter how much he hurts, he refuses to go to a doctor about it. Questions, he says, and won't listen to Sam when he contradicts it. He does what little he can around the yard, fixing up cars that have been sitting for years. Sometimes, he even sells one.

*

It started in Lawrence, Kansas on a starry night lit by the blare of police sirens and the flash of emergency lights and ended 37 years later, on a cold winter morning in Vermont. No matter what comes after, Dean will always think of this as the Ending, because he always has been, always will be, a Hunter first and foremost. He only allows himself to be a man, a human, when the job is done; this is one job that will never be completely finished.


End file.
